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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

It’s odd to me that these anti-car polemics never talk about why Americans don’t want to ride public transit

Yes they do. US public transit is terrible and various groups like Strong Towns describe this and explain why. Things like the way buses wind-up the first thing cut in budget crises etc are important parts of the barrier to ending a car-based urbanism.

See a multitude of article here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/category/Public+Transit

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I think the ops point was that even if they want to, they don’t want to. I can’t comment on the MN light rail now as I haven’t been on it for a few years, but the green line used to be essentially an open air drug market and the blue line I almost got stabbed. Add in a few instances of homeless on homeless violence and driving starts looking like a great option. That’s not even covering how poorly ran it is. I want to ride it… but I don’t want to ride it.

That is a self-reinforcing cycle. There have been long and successful campaigns by car companies and other self-interested entities in the US to associate public transportation with being poor. Just like how a city street is safer per-capita if there are more people on it, public transit is safer if it is more well-used.

I see this in seattle. When I am commuting in the morning or in the evening my bus is full of yuppies and working class people getting to their job. But if I take the bus on the weekend or during the off hours when well-adjusted people are not on it, the bus is a much less inviting place.

I don't know how to solve the problem other than to believe in the system and hope that other people do as well.

All one has to do is charge a fare, enforce it, and other existing laws. Used to be a simple contract.

That was abandoned. While I was a long-term advocate of public transportation, no longer can recommend it. Certainly not for my family in this city.

Not like a “law and order” candidate is ever getting elected again in this state. Even a more compassionate version I’d support.

Unexpectedly Rio de Janeiro does this a lot better than California.

While I'm with you on fare enforcement, there are costs associated with fare collection. Usually it takes passengers time to pull out change and they can be confused about how and where to pay, adding to delays. Building the infrastructure for fare payment at gates is expensive and requires security to maintain and dissuade vandals.

Boudin's recall in SF also shows that there's certainly support for a tougher on crime stance, whether or not you agree with it.

There are costs for doing it properly, and there are costs for not:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-t...

In 2023, any transit system that requires more than quickly tapping your phone, wallet, watch, etc to the the turnstile is decades behind the world technologically and the inconvenience of looking for change is a problem because of the city council or state not investing in public transit. The vast majority of mass transit riders are not tourists from the suburbs using the system as a novelty that would be confused anyway.

I am personally not a fan of NFC becoming the standard in the US, since it requires strategically placing credit cards in your wallet instead of using a card specifically made for transit fare, but it does make it so large swathes of the population never even have to think about going to a fare machine.

A system that relies on turnstiles is decades behind as well. Best practices in much of Europe use proof of payment and cheap monthly passes relative to single tickets, so most users have monthly passes.

This cuts down on access time, infrastructure cost, fare collection cost, and minimizes marginal cost per trip for users (i.e. zero).

In Germany, they just introduced a monthly 49€ ticket that covers transit (and regional trains) for the whole country.

I usually compare how far behind the US is to Japan. How does a system without turnstiles work in Europe? In Japan, the shinkansen can still actually be used with their cards and tapping pass the turnstile, but nearly everyone besides business passengers buys a ticket for the one off far trips. I can't even imagine short trip subways not having a turnstile.

Even in the US, monthly swipe passes have been a thing in even the systems that used tokens.

You tap your card in the bus, when you pass by the tapping devices.

But monthly passes, for example in NYC, are expensive relative to single tickets, so adoption is relatively low.

If everyone has a monthly pass, fare evasion is less of an issue even in an open system. Fares are checked on a sampling basis with fines for not having a ticket.

Fines only hurt working people. The homeless just ignore them.

Could you justify the term "best practises"?

Last time I took an U-Bahn in Berlin, a guy was urinating in front of me. I have not seen such sociopathic behaviour in public transport in Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing. All are turnstile based. I feel that they are strictly better in almost all dimensions than e.g. Berlin's public transport. In all you pay with some variant of NFC tech, e.g. your phone. Zero effort.

Fine-grained access control also allows for better understanding of train usage, and capacity planning.

Cost of transport is orthogonal to access.

Asian cities are very different from the West, so not sure lessons apply. Although Berlin is probably more affordable in PPP terms, and relative to population has more rapid transit than those asian cities (500km for 4.6Mio ppl).

In virtually all dimensions, Berlin transit is better than every US system, Except NYC. Which is ironically the only place Ive ever seen anybody pee in the subway, and that one is supposedly “protected” by turnstiles.

The US has a homelessness epidemic, Berlin has some problems in this area as well. This is a problem thats orthogonal to the transit system, and has to be solved by society at large. Turnstiles don’t solve homelessness.

I did not bring up US public transport as an example of "best practises". I agree that Berlin has a extensive and well-developed public transport, and that is commendable.

> Turnstiles don’t solve homelessness.

Nobody claims they do. My anecdote illustrated the opposite direction: barriers remove one related cluster of reasons, related to personal safety, why some avoid public transport and prefer to drive by car, namely the fear to be accosted by vagrants, pickpockets, and other forms of sociopathy.

But they don’t solve that as well, cf. NYC subway.

Do you think this has something to do with the fact that turnstile jumping has been effectively legalised (in the sense of not being prosecuted) in NY?

Question for you: can you quantify, what fraction of crime and other forms of sociopathy in the NY public transport system you estimate to be committed by passengers who paid their fare? (My estimation: less than 1 percent.)

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that a simple metal gate alone can completely solve complex social dysfunction, a simple metal gate can however help, and, when we refer to turnstile access being desirable, we implicitly assume that we can reasonably expect turnstile use being adhered to, and violations punished with at least moderately high probability.

What exactly are you adding here?

I've noted that public transit is unpleasant 'cause it's underfunded and poorly planned. There's not much money for security, the routes are bad and irregular and so only those with no other choice ride it and so it's the very poor and that can result in bad behavior - plus those aiming to victimize step in as well.

We created a society where homeless people have so few means, they turn to public transit just to have a roof over their heads and stay warm. Then we lament how public transit has become “undesirable”, never recognizing the active steps we take to make it so.

It’s a prerequisite that must be fixed to restore public transport in this area:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-t...

It's a self reinforcing cycle. Public transit sucks, ergo it is cut, it becomes worse is less useful, ridership declines, nobody is riding it, defunded more - rinse wash repeat. See transit is horrible... Seeing well done public transit is eye opening. We also don't consider sometimes that driving is terrible too in cities. 30 minutes to get down an on ramp, 30 more to go across a bridge. At some point bad public transit and grid locked cities is just.. dystopian. Fundamentally a problem of scale, personal cars just can't move many millions in and out of a city, the math of how much time and space that requires doesn't work.

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